Arrangements being made for recovered decomposing bodies at funeral home

Wednesday

Aug 17, 2016 at 7:26 AMAug 17, 2016 at 7:32 AM

After discovering 16 decomposing corpses at a local funeral home, officials are left trying to respect the final wishes of the dead and their families.

ZACK McDONALD News Herald Reporter @PCNHzack

PANAMA CITY — After the discovery of decomposing corpses at a local funeral home prompted its shutdown and the arrest of two employees, officials are left trying to respect the final wishes of the dead and their families.

The discovery Sunday of 16 bodies in varying degrees of decay at Brock’s Home Town Funeral Home, 5907 State 22, was only the beginning of a lengthy process to find them dignity in death. Some of the bodies had not been refrigerated for some time, according to Bay County Sheriff’s Office reports, and most were kept in an improperly refrigerated unit. Two employees were arrested with a combined total of 16 misdemeanor charges of unlawful storage of human remains, and BCSO has said additional charges could follow.

Brock’s was primarily a low-income funeral home that mostly performed cremations, officials said, and most of the 16 bodies recovered were supposed to have been cremated. Others only recently had been turned over to the funeral home, and the families of the deceased had yet to make arrangements.

As of Tuesday, the 14th Judicial Circuit Medical Examiner’s Office (MEO) was going through the paperwork for each of the deceased in an attempt to see what the families wanted for their loved ones and honor those requests.

“We’re slowly, one at a time, figuring out what they wanted,” said Whit Majors, MEO director of operations. “We’re trying to get that done for them.”

While the Bay County Sheriff’s Office has been contacting the families of the deceased to notify them of the situation, Majors said state officials are acting as a liaison between the families and other funeral homes to fulfill the final wishes of the deceased.

“It does take time to do a cremation,” Majors said. “A couple did not have arrangements at all, so we are trying to get that figured out as well.”

In addition to the 16 bodies, MEO officials said the office also has received several containers of cremated remains that were in the process of being sent back to their respective families. With the abrupt closure of Brock’s, that task, too, has fallen on authorities.

According to a spokesman of Florida Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater, Brock’s Home Town Funeral Home has “agreed to surrender their funeral home and incinerator facility licenses to the state, effectively ceasing their ability to operate.”

The investigation into the matter still is pending. Gregory Dunphy, 64, funeral director, and Felicia Boesch, 39, daughter to the owner of the funeral home, were arrested in connection with the discovery. The two have been charged with a combined 16 misdemeanor counts of unlawful storage of human remains: six for Dunphy and 10 for Boesch.

Neither could be reached for comment, and why they failed to handle the bodies properly remains unclear.

BCSO spokeswoman Ruth Corley said officers are conferring with the State Attorney’s Office to determine if additional charges of fraud or grand theft are appropriate. In that case, families could see restitution for any additional expense through criminal courts rather than having to hire an attorney.

According to BCSO reports, officers found flies throughout the main part of the funeral home where six of the bodies were being kept without refrigeration. In the “cooler,” 10 bodies — required to be stored at no more than 40 degrees — were stored at 62 degrees, officers reported.

“None of the bodies had been embalmed,” officers wrote. “Those remains whose families requested cremation had not been cremated.”

Many of the bodies had begun to show signs of decomposition.

The discovery is not the first of its kind in Florida’s history. In 100-plus-degree heat in June 1988, investigators found 42 corpses rotting in a clutter at the Howell Morning Glory Chapel, a Jacksonville funeral home that subsisted on work for the poor and a city contract to bury indigents. The owner, Lewis J. Howell, was arrested, put out of business and sentenced to a brief prison term.

At the time, officials reported bodies were double-stacked inside a closet in caskets and bulging bags that investigators had hoped contained only old clothes. The closet had been partly walled in, and police and medical examiners had to remove paneling to get to many of the remains.